From a non-store perspective...
To me, extra free listings = $0 insertion fees, it has nothing to do with the amount of items which show up under your name. If 36 of my items don't sell in a month, three free relistings included, then I am a sitting suck unless I want to start eating $1.50 + 12% or so for my games, many of which are between $2 and $5. An extra 100 would come in very handy for me. eBay Stores on the other hand get 200 free listings per month (at the cost of $50) and discounted insertion fees, however if I can't sell 40, I don't see how paying $50 and having 100 or so items sitting around for months on end will make a difference - most likely I will just end up selling about 10 instead if I'm lucky. Yes, apparently there's a $20 store option now, I never noticed that before; same story though, it's only worth having a store if your items are constantly moving.
With the initial 40, the only luck involved about it is that it isn't a stingy 20 which eBay UK gives out (but then again, like just about every other eBay site, their insertion fees are about half the price of ours, at 35p), and that they haven't discontinued free listings entirely.
Also, W. T. F., eBay - PDF documents in the help section? Way to turn back to clock to 1993 morons, no-one wants to print things in 2015. HTML is a web standard for a reason.
